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The Central government on Friday raised interest rates on eight of the 12 small savings schemes by 20 to 110 basis points for the January to March 2023 quarter, but left the returns on the popular Public Provident Fund (PPF) unchanged at 7.1% for the eleventh quarter in a row. One basis point or bps equals 0.01%.
The Sukanya Samriddhi Account Scheme’s return was also retained at 7.6%, prevailing since April 2020 when small savings schemes’ rates were cut across the board.
The returns on Kisan Vikas Patra (KVP) and the National Savings Certificate (NSC) were raised by just 20 bps each, to 7.2% and 7%, respectively.
This is the second successive quarter that the government has effected selective hikes in small savings rates. Economists said that the increases were lower than expected, given the increase in interest rates and high inflation in recent quarters.
For the ongoing October to December quarter, rates were raised — for the first time since January 2019 — by a marginal 10 to 30 bps for just five of the 12 schemes.
As per Reserve Bank of India calculations, the small savings rates which are pegged by a formula to the yields on government securities, were 44 to 77 bps below their formula-implied rates for nine of the 12 schemes this quarter.
The PPF return for October to December, as per the formula, should have been 7.72% instead of the existing 7.1%, while the Sukanya Samriddhi Account should have been paid 8.22% instead of 7.6%.
Returns on the Senior Citizens’ Savings Scheme and the Monthly Income Account Scheme have been raised by 40 bps each, taking them to 8% and 7.1%, respectively.
The Senior Citizens’ Savings Scheme’s returns were raised from 7.4% to 7.6% for this quarter, while the formula-determined rate was 8.04%. Thus, its rate hike to 8% for the coming quarter almost bridges the entire deviation from the formula-based rate.
States
‘Anomalies’ found at Sigur corridor school in Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (Page no. 3)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
All-terrain vehicles, watchtowers, an “elephant” shower to entice pachyderms and a viewing screen inside a building — these were some of the “anomalies” noted by the Sigur Elephant Corridor Inquiry Committee in a private school in the notified elephant corridor in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) recently.
The court-appointed technical committee, headed by retired judge K. Venkatraman, had inspected the school as well as 40 other locations earlier this week.
During the inspection, the school, which is situated in the buffer zone of the tiger reserve and models itself as a “tribal school,” was found to have a few watchtowers, viewing screens and a specially designed shower that activists believe helps attract passing elephants.
The revenue department is also claiming that the school encroaches on around 1,200 square meters of revenue land, while the Forest department has also requested the survey department to demarcate government lands and see if they coincide with the patta claimed by the owners of the school.
N. Sadiq Ali, Founder of the Wildlife and Nature Conservation Trust (WNCT), had stated that when there had been calls to capture a wild elephant, known locally as ‘Rivaldo’, that he and other animal rights activists had informed the forest department that the school authorities had been responsible in large part for transforming the behavior of the animal and had made it reliant on people for food.
The forest department should launch an investigation as to what purposes this infrastructure is serving in the school, and even if there is a slight doubt that animals are being attracted to the area, then they should ask the school to remove it.
The conservationist said that such initiatives to attract elephants could bring the animals in close proximity to humans and lead to more negative human-animal interactions in the region.
States
Study shows butterflies bedazzle predators and escape (Page no. 5)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
In a five-year study, scientists of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) have discovered secrets of a long evolutionary game through which butterflies come to warn, fool, and escape their predators using traits such as wing colour patterns and even flight behaviour.
The study conducted by NCBS PhD students Dipendra Nath Basu and Vaishali Bhaumik, along with their PhD advisor Prof. Krushnamegh Kunte, has investigated the butterfly mimetic communities of the Western Ghats.
Explaining the objective of the study, which was conducted between 2017 and 2022, the PhD students said that mimicry is an adaptive phenomenon, and in mimicry, a palatable organism resembles an unpalatable organism to deceive predators.
The unpalatable one is called models (Müllerian co-models) and the palatable one is called mimics (Batesian mimics). Interestingly, mimicry in butterflies is not limited to the resemblance in wing colour patterns alone, as some mimics have also evolved to imitate the flight behaviours of model species. In nature, multiple model and mimic butterflies could be found in the same habitat at the same time. These similar-looking co-occurring butterflies together form a mimetic community.
They added that these mimetic communities are generally common in tropical and sub-tropical biodiversity hotspots. The NCBS team in order to find out how these two mimetic traits (wing colour patterns and flight morphology) evolve over time, investigated the butterfly mimetic communities of the Western Ghats.
The duo said that their findings have shed light on how the rate of trait evolution helps butterflies to escape their predators. These (the findings) can be carried forward to investigate whether the rate of trait evolution is similar in young communities, such as in the Western Ghats versus large, old communities in NE India.
We suspect that the evolutionary dynamics of functional traits depend heavily on the age, size and complexity of biological communities.
In this study, for the first time, evolution of multiple traits was examined in a biological community, especially in a biodiversity hotspot of the Indian subcontinent.
Editorial
A strong case exists for marriage equality (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
A recent statement by a Member of Parliament that same-sex marriages are against the (so-called) cultural ethos of India has once again stirred up the debate on marriage equality.
This is amidst a petition for marriage rights of same-sex couples (under the Special Marriage Act, 1954) pending before the Supreme Court of India.
The most obvious hurdle in adjudication seems to be the legitimacy of the institution — i.e., whether courts should intervene in marriage rights or leave it to the wisdom of Parliament.
However, another factor that may guide the Court urging it to intervene here is that it previously decriminalised consensual same-sex conduct on the basis of the ‘right to equality’ and not merely the ‘right to privacy’.
An aspect to the LGBTQ community’s legal battle has been whether the law criminalising sexual conduct has been violative of the right to privacy or the right to equality. In the former, one’s sexual orientation and choice of a sexual partner were held intrinsic to privacy and personal liberty.
In the latter, equal treatment of same-sex couples with those of heterosexual couples was considered paramount. As argued by lawyer Jonathan Berger, this makes a difference because while a privacy analysis calls for a complete ‘hands-off’ approach from the state where it should not interfere, an equality analysis requires the state to take positive steps to ensure equal treatment in all spheres of life.
Thus, once equal treatment with heterosexual persons is established, it ought to become simpler to seek sequential rights of equalising age of consent, prohibiting employment discrimination, rights in marriage, adoption etc.
The European Court of Human Rights, in Dudgeon vs UK (1981), struck down the offence of buggery in Northern Ireland as violative of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights because it disproportionately restricted personal and family life. This restriction cast on the most intimate part of personal life could not be justified by any pressing social need.
The court thus adopted a privacy approach and did not go into the question of equal treatment under Article 14. It could be argued that this made it difficult for a same sex couple, in Oliari vs Italy, to seek marriage rights in Italy.
Here, the court reasoned that states could not be obligated to grant marriage equality, provided there was some form of legal recognition of their rights.
Ground zero
The other side of the sanctuary (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
George Thomas, a nonagenarian settler-farmer from Muthukad, a verdant agricultural village located 55 km away from Kozhikode, is living in fear of the future these days.
The events unfolding in the State over the Supreme Court’s direction that every protected forest, national park and wildlife sanctuary in the country should have a mandatory eco-sensitive zone (ESZ) of 1 km starting from their demarcated boundaries have caused him great angst.
The 10-acre land he holds was practically barren when his parents purchased it from a local landlord in the early 1940s. He and his children toiled on the land, located at an aerial distance of about a kilometre from the Malabar Wildlife Sanctuary, a protected area in Kozhikode district, and converted it into farmland.
Thomas, who recently retired from active farming following heart ailments, fears that the government will take away the holding and render him landless once the ESZ regime comes into effect.
Farmers living on the fringes of other protected areas harbour similar fears. When they voiced their concerns in mid-December, the Church lent them support. Bishop Remigiose Maria Paul Inchananiyil, a high priest of the powerful Syro-Malabar Church, declared at Koorachundu, 13 km away from Thomas’s property, that the Church would not mind taking extreme measures to protect the interests of the settlers.
The fairly large crowd that had gathered to listen to him raised slogans against the government. The protests were a throwback to the restiveness triggered by the recommendations of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) led by Madhav Gadgil to conserve the fragile ecology of the mountain chain between 2012 and 2014.
Bishop Inchananiyil heads the Thamarassery Diocese. Thamarassery has a significant population of Christians and farmers. The area was the hub of protests in north Kerala against the WGEEP report.
Violent protesters, who were inflamed by rumours that their farmlands would be taken back, had then set fire to a forest office and a police vehicle.
The ESZ demarcation move, too, suddenly became an emotive issue for hundreds of farmers in the region who have successfully built their lives and settlements on forest fringes, battling inclement weather and wild beasts.
News
India, Saudi Arabia discuss treaty on mutual assistance for criminal investigations (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
India and Saudi Arabia are in talks to sign a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) to obtain formal assistance from each other in investigations related to criminal cases.
Saudi Arabia is only among a dozen other countries that does not have either an MLAT or any other bilateral agreement with India to facilitate such investigations. India has so far signed MLATs with 45 countries, and is also in talks to finalise MLATs with Italy and Germany.
According to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), an MLAT is “a mechanism whereby countries cooperate with one another in order to provide and obtain formal assistance in prevention, suppression, investigation and prosecution of crime to ensure that the criminals do not escape or sabotage the due process of law for want of evidence available in different countries.”
Officials in Saudi Arabia and India have now initiated discussions to sign the treaty. On November 7, India held the first virtual negotiation meeting with Saudi Arabia.
The Indian delegation was led by officials from the MHA, the Ministry of External Affairs, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Law Ministry.
In the past, Saudi Arabia has deported several terror suspects on India’s request. An official said that the signing of the treaty would help in getting a conviction for an accused in a court of law, based on evidence gathered through the mutual agreement. MLATs are used to send a formal request for investigation in foreign countries for collection of evidence, examination of witness and execution of orders of attachment and confiscation of assets.
According to the MHA, in countries which are not covered by any bilateral or multilateral treaty or agreement or international convention, the summons, notices and judicial processes are served on the basis of an “assurance of reciprocity.
On December 28, Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla said that the MHA had designed a new online portal on MLAT and letter rogatory (LR) requests for probe agencies.
Business
India’s global financial assets slide $56.5 bn on valuation loss (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The net claims of non-residents on India increased by $34.3 billion during Q2 of FY23 and stood at $389.6 billion in September, data released by Released Bank of India (RBI) on India’s International Investment Position (IIP) indicate.
As per the data, India’s international financial assets declined by $56.5 billion during July-September 2022 with valuation losses accounting for a major part. Reserve assets remained the dominant component (62.9% share) of India’s international financial assets.
The fall in India’s foreign liabilities during Q2 was attributed primarily to direct investment (net) outflows; portfolio and other investments also recorded marginal decline on a net basis, barring trade credit which increased by $5.1 billion.
Variation in the exchange rate of rupee vis-a-vis other currencies also impacted the change in liabilities, when valued in U.S. dollar terms.
Debt and non-debt liabilities continued to have equal share in total external liabilities. The ratio of international assets to international liabilities moderated to 68.5% in September from 71.5% a quarter ago.